SOAS scholar contributes to ICOMOS guidelines for recovery and reconstruction of World Heritage Sites

13 June 2017

Professor Trevor H J Marchand, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at SOAS University of London, is contributing to the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) guidance for post-trauma recovery and reconstruction of World Heritage Sites. The guidelines, once finalised, will be used by UNESCO and by local stakeholders who manage heritage sites.

Above: View across a communal garden to a terrace of medieval houses in al-Qasimi quarter of the Old City of Sanaa. Photograph by Trevor Marchand,1998

Below: View across the same garden after an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition forces on 12 June 2015. Photograph by Sarah Rijziger

The aim of the guidance is to assist countries that adhere to the World Heritage Convention to assess the damage caused to World Heritage Sites by natural disaster, conflict or intentional acts of destruction. It also enables these countries to evaluate the options for the recovery of the sites.

At the most recent workshop held at ICOMOS headquarters in Paris this month, Professor Marchand was part of a team developing a template for stakeholders to set out plans and actions and to record the processes for recovering damaged or destroyed heritage sites.

Professor Marchand’s research explores the anthropology of craft. This summer he will be exhibiting ‘"Buildings That Fill My Eye": Architectural Heritage of Yemen’, which will highlight three UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Yemen and several others on the Tentative List. The exhibition opens at SOAS’s Brunei Gallery on 13 July and closes on 23 September 2017.